Rush defender gets to face brother this weekendBack to video

The Saskatchewan Rush transition/defender speedster gets to square off against his older brother, who plays for the Stealth, when they meet Saturday in Vancouver.

“I love matching up against him, but my mom doesn’t really like it because she thinks we are going to try and hurt each other, which makes no sense,” laughed Jeff, who grew up in Port Coquitlam. “It is nice to go back to the roots as to why I play lacrosse and how I got into it.”

“She’s like any mom,” adds Travis, who came over to Vancouver this season after spending a number of years with the Calgary Roughnecks.

In previous years when they played in Calgary and Edmonton respectively, they used to play against each five or six times a season.

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To be impartial at those games, one parent would wear a Roughnecks jersey and a Rush hat, the other would wear a Rush jersey and a Roughnecks hat.

“They just wanted us to score as many goals as we could, make as many good stops and whoever wins, wins,” Travis said.

In fact, it was their father who got them involved in the sport of lacrosse.

“I got into lacrosse originally because of my father (Wendell) who worked with the City of Burnaby in the rec rinks,” Jeff said. “He would always allow the Burnaby Lakers (lacrosse team) onto the floor after hours to shoot the ball around. He didn’t know anything about the sport, but they gave him a stick and he decided he was going to teach his kids how to play.”

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Throughout his youth Jeff mostly concentrated on football, which ran in the family. Wendell was drafted by the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 1984 and attended a couple of training camps with the Riders and then B.C. Lions before retiring at 25.

Jeff was offered a football scholarship, but decided on concentrating full-time on lacrosse, thanks to some sage advice from Travis.

“He cornered me and said I should see how good I could be and really commit to it,” he said. “And I’ve been a lacrosse guy ever since.”

“I told him he could play pro if he wanted,” Travis said. “He was a really good defender so I told him to focus on that too.”

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Now the 6-foot-2, 218 pound transition/defender is in his fifth year in the NLL.

He came into the league at just 19 with the Buffalo Bandits before being traded to the Rush for a pair of second-round picks in the 2012 NLL Entry Draft.

His blazing speed keeps the opposition on their heels anytime there is a loose ball, but Jeff said that is only one facet of his game.

“I like to think of my speed as a secondary factor of my game,” he said. “My big part out there is to use my speed to create opportunities when they present themselves. When I try to force things, it becomes pretty evident because if I over commit and then I will get beat. So I have to trust in the system, trust in my teammates, and then when there is a ground ball and I have an opportunity I can just take off on it.”

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“He’s the fastest guy in the league,” Travis said of his younger sibling. “And he understands the opponent’s schemes and does his homework. Saskatchewan, they stick to their defensive system. There is a prescribed thing you do in every situation and (Jeff) does that well.”

While the Rush have wrapped up first in the Western Division they are still shooting for first overall in the league. The Stealth are in a must-win situation to try and overtake Calgary for the final playoff spot.

“You can never take your foot off the gas,” Jeff said. “In the upcoming weeks we have to continue to push to be a better team every single week.

“We have had some really rough battles in there and a lot of close games, but what’s really important is that as we move closer we are becoming more of a cohesive unit and if we continue to do that for the next two weeks then we are going to hit the playoffs running and hopefully make a statement.”

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